Shooting advice and gun dog training: Careful with your puppy.

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Gun dog training: Careful with your puppy!

You need to be careful to not over-train your puppy, although it will need early stimulus in order for it to develop properly.

By Tony Price

Friday, 06 February 2009

So that’s it, you’ve finally got your new puppy. It’s fully vaccinated, raring to go and ready to start its exercise and training. You’ve got all your new equipment and are chomping at the bit to make a start.

Trouble is, it’s now we run slap bang into the first problem you’re going to encounter - over enthusiasm. Not on the dog’s part mind, but yours!

Remember this is only a puppy and you’re not yet embarking on a strict training regime. You should consider any early ‘lessons’ as groundwork; guiding the puppy into doing things that you’ll require him to do later on in his career and steering him away from bad habits.

It’s also worth remembering that anything you teach a puppy that’s less than, say, eight months old, might need re-educating at a later date.

As such, there’s no point in embarking on a regime of walking to heel, sitting and staying only to find that eight months later virtually all the time and effort you’ve put in has been wasted.

On the other hand these are some of the most important times in the puppy’s development.

As unbelievable as it might sound, I’ve had people come to me with an eight-month-old youngster that has never had anything done to it, simply because the owners’ mate (Fred from down the road who knows about dogs) told him not to do anything too soon as it would spoil the pup.

Doing nothing is not an option as this can create problems because the youngster is well behind in his mental and physical development.

The first problem I generally come across is with retrieving – especially if the puppy lives indoors rather than being kennelled outside. The golden rule that must be applied is that whenever the puppy picks anything up it must be encouraged to bring the item back.

The youngster must be praised for its actions, before the item is taken away and placed out of the dog’s reach. It never ceases to amaze me how many people scold a pup for picking up things indoors - and then can’t understand why the dog is reluctant to retrieve a ball or dummy for them when it’s outside!

Spaniel pup retrieving a ball

You should also remember not to ask the puppy to do too much. If the youngster has done several retrieves indoors it might be asking too much for it to carry on with similar exercises outside.

So always err on the side of caution. Be sure only to give a young dog just enough retrieves to keep the enthusiasm going and help develop its ability. Even at this early age it’s necessary to differentiate between training techniques for retrievers and spaniels. For instance, I would gradually throw retrieves further and further away for a Labrador, and also into thicker and thicker cover, so that we don’t end up with a cover shy retriever.

With the spaniel, however, I wouldn’t throw a retrieve further than, say, 10 yards away - as I don’t want to instil in the puppy’s mind that it’s going to find everything 30 or more yards away. You can do this quite easily by allowing the spaniel to race about before dropping the tennis ball or small dummy into cover relatively close to you.

Make sure the dog doesn’t see the dummy drop and then encourage the pup to hunt into this cover from the downwind side. At this point don’t be tempted to try too large a dummy as there’s plenty of time to move on to these later and we don’t want to knock the puppy’s confidence in retrieving.

If you find you have a puppy that’s reluctant to retrieve a particular item, a tennis ball or puppy dummy, for instance, don’t keep trying to get it to retrieve them. Instead be inventive and find something the pup does like to pick up. This can be anything from a small fluffy toy to a tennis ball/small puppy dummy covered in rabbit skin.

That said, once you find something he’s ready and willing to pick up and carry, don’t overdo the retrieving. One or two retrieves per session is ample and if possible this should be done in an area that has no interesting smells that could prove a distraction.

If possible you should sit on the floor and encourage the puppy to climb on your lap while holding the retrieve where you can lavish him with praise before gently taking the retrieve from him. At this age I also like to get a puppy accustomed to having a lead around the neck. I don’t mean pulling it about on the lead, but just to place the lead around the puppy’s neck, pushing the stop up to the correct position and then allowing the youngster to run about dragging the lead behind him.

This gets him used to the small amount of tension the lead provides around his neck. At this stage I gradually pick the lead up, but as soon as the puppy starts to get stressed I then allow it to drop and just encourage the puppy to come back to me, lavishing him with praise as he does so.

This should only be done for a few minutes each session and gradually build up to a point where the puppy will happily walk on the lead. This may take several weeks or even months to achieve, but the important thing is not to stress or frighten the puppy while you’re doing it. If you’ve got a retriever and you’ve reached this stage you can now move on to memory retrieves.

You do it this way; Drop a dummy when the puppy’s walking on the lead alongside and then encourage the dog to walk on with you away from the retrieve for a reasonable distance. Now slip the lead off and encourage him to go back and collect the dummy.

With retriever pups there’s a word of warning concerning over exercising – under no circumstances should you risk spoiling your puppies joints by overdoing any of this play training before he’s one year old - once any damage is done it can’t be rectified.

Also bear in mind that if the puppy lives indoors and you have children he may well be getting far more exercise than you think!

This also applies if you have an older dog and the puppy tries to keep up with it all day.

Tony can be contacted on 01795 886046.

www.tawnyhillgundogs.co.uk